Holidating: It's the Most Romantic Time of the Year by Dr. Justin Garcia

December 3, 2012

“Holidating” is an ongoing Match.com blog series focusing on data from a recent Match.com survey on singles and the holiday season. Stay tuned for more posts examining the data in the upcoming week!

Do you remember your first real kiss? I do. I was in High School. It was a late afternoon in December. Huge snowflakes were descending on New York City, the type that blankets the ground in glittering white. We walked through a local park, passed a tall evergreen wrapped in holiday lights, then sat on a snow-covered bench. She turned and smiled. One of those oversized snowflakes landed on her lip, and I leaned in to kiss her. It was exactly like a scene in a romantic movie. One of those super cheesy movies where one wants to groan and say “Ugh… Seriously?!”.

I think there is something about the holiday season that really does make things seem extra romantic. Perhaps that’s why 82% of Match.com members surveyed said the holidays make them feel more romantic than other times of the year. Maybe it’s all the cheer, festivities, gift giving, a new year and new beginnings, and for some parts of the country those cold snowy nights. All the ingredients for a holiday romance.

Many of us have images in our minds, of what we want our ideal romantic lives to be: with whom, when, where, and how. What psychologists call “love stories.” They are the scripts we’ve made for our very own romantic movie, our love lives. I think the holidays bring forward our seasonal scripts, our desires to feel the pull of something special. We can feel compelled to have those shimmering lights, holiday spirits, and well-timed New Year’s Eve kisses be the winter spark to start the flames of love.

Hopefully we can all enjoy those extra feelings of romance that will come with the holiday season this year. Here’s to finding that special someone under some well-placed mistletoe!

Dr. Justin R. Garcia is CTRD Research Fellow with The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is an expert on the biological foundations of human behavior, particularly romantic love, intimacy, and sexual behavior. Dr. Garcia earned a MS in biomedical anthropology and PhD in evolutionary biology from Binghamton University. He is co-author of Evolution and Human Sexual Behavior (Harvard University Press). Since 2010 he has served as a scientific advisor to Match.com.